EXPOSITION
Then I looked, etc. There follows on the work of judgment another theophany, like that of Ezekiel 1:15-28. In the "expanse," or firmament, like the "terrible crystal," there is seen as before the likeness of a sapphire throne (see Ezekiel 1:26, note). The form of the man who is the manifestation of Jehovah is implied, though not named. It is he who speaks to the captain of the six ministers of vengeance, himself the seventh, and bids him go in beneath the "whirling wheels" that are beneath the cherub (collective singular, as in Ezekiel 9:9), and fill his hands with coals of fire (Ezekiel 1:13), and scatter them over the city, as the symbol of its doom. We are reminded of Isaiah's vision (Isaiah 6:6); but there the work of the fire was to purify, here simply to destroy.
Now the cherubim stood, etc. The position of the cherubim is defined, with a vivid distinctness of detail, which once more reminds us of Dante. They had been standing on the right, i.e. the southern side of the sanctuary. What follows is probably a reproduction of the change of positions described in Ezekiel 9:3, and the verbs should be taken, therefore, as pluperfects. The cloud of glory, as in 1 Kings 8:10, 1 Kings 8:11 and Isaiah 6:1, Isaiah 6:2, the Shechinah, that was the taken of the Divine presence, filled the court, but the glory itself had moved to the threshold at the first stage of its departure.
And the sound of the cherubim. The use of God Almighty (El Shaddai; comp. Exodus 6:3), the name of God as ruling over nature, while Jehovah expressed his covenant relationship to Israel, is, it may be noted, characteristic of the early stage of the religion of Israel (Genesis 17:1; Genesis 28:3; Genesis 43:14; Genesis 48:3). Shaddai alone appears eighty-one times in the Book of Job. Psalms 29:1-11. explains the voice of El Shaddai (though there it is "the voice of Jehovah") as meaning the roar of the thunder. The hands of the "living creatures," now recognized as cherubim, had been mentioned in Ezekiel 1:8, and it is one of those hands that gives the fire into the hands of the linen vested minister of wrath. The elemental forces of nature, of which the cherubim are, partly at least, the symbols, are working out the purposes of Jehovah. The two words translated wheels are different in the Hebrew. The first is singular and collective (galgal, the "whirling thing," used of the wheel of a war chariot, Ezekiel 23:24; Isaiah 5:28), and might well be translated "chariot" here. The second, that used in Ezekiel 1:15, Ezekiel 1:16, also in the singular, is applied to the single wheel of the four by which the angel, ministers stood.
The description of the theophany that follows, though essentially identical with that in Ezekiel 1:1-28 is not a literal transcript of it. The prophet struggles, as before, to relate what he has actually seen in the visions of God. The fact is stated as explaining the mention of the "hand" in Ezekiel 1:7. That, as in Ezekiel 1:8, was one of their members (see notes on Ezekiel 1:15-17). All that had seemed most startling and awful to him on the banks of Chebar is now seen again—the four living creatures, now named cherubim.the wheel by each, the unswerving motion of the wheels in their onward course.